Establishing Premise in Serenity RPG
mcv:
Quote from: Christopher Kubasik on February 19, 2009, 11:47:23 AM
1) There may or may not be a "group" the PCs belong to. Even if they start as a group, the fact that the Players are have full freedom to make any choices they want for their PCs might mean the group might fracture and the PCs might even be at each other's throats before the characters finish their stories
I've had games like that (very rarely, though), and it's fine for one-shot games. Not so good for long campaigns, I'm afraid, and I happen to like those. For campaigns, it's nice to have characters who have just enough in common to stay together.
Have you read what I wrote in another thread about a particularly dramatic session with mismatched characters? It was memorable, but maybe a bit too intense, and not a lot of fun for the player who got completely overshadowed by the escalating conflict between the other characters.
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3) There is no expectation as to how things should be or will end up. At all. Initial circumstances are created -- and then we start rolling with the story and find out how it's all going to end up. No one, neither the GM nor the Players, can have an agenda or expectations about the way things are going go to be or supposed to be. I can only point, again, to the shows listed above to show how wonderfully varied stories can be once one leaves the "team" mentality behind.
The thing is, when you do that, the characters will soon each go their separate ways, and there won't be much game left. Either there needs to be a compelling reason for the characters to be together, or you need to game it so that they stay together even if the characters by their own free choice wouldn't have done so.
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I'm currently GMing a Sorcerer game in the setting of Traveller. My three players created a rich and detailed military background and intertwined history for their PCs. They decided they have a ship, run a merc crew. And then play began... last night one PC was desperately trying to save the religious leader from a mob while another PC trained his weapon on the leaders head, afraid of the trouble the woman would bring to his crew and his friends. It was an incredibly involved struggle for the three PCs as they tried to protect each other -- but also knew that they might come to blows with each other because of their own agendas that might transcend their friendships. (It feels very much like BSG, actually. Two of the PCs have smuggled a nuke onto their ship to use against their enemies (just in case), even though the third PC, the ship's captain, has explicitly forbidden this action.)
So the characters have a common history. They've already been designed to have something in common. They work together, take missions together, etc. But what will the captain do when he finds out the others have disobeyed a direct order? Will he kick them off his ship? Can he afford to do so? How much freedom does he really have? Are there really no expectations as to how he should act?
To be honest, this example reminds me of quite a lot of sessions I've been in and heard about.
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By the time we're done with all this, the PCs might have all killed each other or might be stronger friends than they were before. We just don't know. And that's part of the fun. Everyone is playing from the perspective of their characters and the fiction... it's emotional and visceral and not academic or intellectual at all -- in part because the Player have the freedom to make any choice they want for their PCs out of the fiction as defined up to that point.
If everybody is aware that they might all kill each other, then you've already accepted that this is probably not going to be a very long campaign. Which is fine, but still not terribly different from any other game where you've accepted that. I mean, if this is all there is to narrativism, then I've done it dozens of times already.
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So, before I go any further, do you have questions about playing this way? Is this something you can see working? Does it interest you? Why or why not?
I think I've done similar things a couple of times already, and while it was fun at times (though not always), I was kinda hoping for a bit more than just disfunctional group cohesion.
mcv:
Quote from: JB on February 19, 2009, 01:42:41 PM
Since you don't have any nar games to refer to yet, consider this extremely rough and overly specific example.
Imagine a game where Mal's player gets Points!* for 'looking out for his' and acting so they don't come to harm. And the player gets to choose NPCs who are 'his' - they go on a list on the character sheet. But if one of the characters on that list does come to harm, or the player wants to take someone off the list, then Mal's player looses Points!
This doesn't really sound all that dissimilar from Dependents in GURPS. Admittedly I've never really been able to get a handle on Dependents in GURPS, possibly because they didn't fit all that well into my generally Sim approach.
I'm pretty sure the Plot Points mechanism in Serenity RPG can be used for this very same purpose. It doesn't have a Dependent or "looking out for his" trait, but it does have Loyal, which means a certain group of people can count on you when they're in trouble, and the character gets Plot Points for helping them. I don't think he loses them for not helping them, though. I was actually considering awarding Plot Points for the refusal to help if he has a very good reason not to, and he confronts that conflict head on, but apparently that's not so Narrativist?
Christopher Kubasik:
Ah, Martijn, you keep doing this thing, and the thing is this: Someone says, "Blah, blah, blah..." and you say, "That's all Story Now is?"
I don't know why you do this, but I can only say I never said that's what Story Now is. I said it's a part of it.
If you've done it before, that's great.
I have a feeling there's not much more for me to offer here since what I have to offer isn't what I think you want, but I wanted to clarify a few things:
- I'm not sure what you mean by campaign in terms of length, but I know that I and others have played games for months and months. I honestly don't see why it couldn't go longer.
- There's no reason for characters not to be a cohesive unit. It's a choice on the part of the Players. But the choice has to be there. When you write, "The thing is, when you do that, the characters will soon each go their separate ways, and there won't be much game left. Either there needs to be a compelling reason for the characters to be together, or you need to game it so that they stay together even if the characters by their own free choice wouldn't have done so," I can safely reply: No, this isn't true. This is flat out wrong. I -- and many others -- have played many long terms sessions that worked very well this way. You may not have and you may not see how. But it can be done, with a great deal of fun and enthusiasm from everyone at the table.
- The characters often split up, but I use lots of cross-cutting between scenes as a GM, shifting from one PC to the next. Because of the games I use and the techniques I use, everyone is engaged with what's going on, because what's happening to one player's PC is of interest to every other Player.
- I feel compelled to point out that my Players -- whether at conventions or my regular group -- all have a great time in these games. No one feels left out. This is only my data set and my say-so, but the reason I brought this up is that most folks assume this kind of play can't work, leaves folks being bored, or works - but only infrequently. But it's part of larger package that really helps it work in terms of rules, procedures and techniques.
- The reason I brought this up was because I was thinking of typing up a version of Firefly using the rules for Sorcerer. But Sorcerer assumes that the PCs can go their own way, and might even come to blows. A lot of how the game works simply doesn't make sense if players don't see this as a functional option. And since a lot of folks don't see it as an effective or fun or functional means of play, I just needed to see where you stood on this stuff. You don't see the appeal, and that's cool.
I just went and read the thread you linked to. I can only say that last night I GM'd Sorcerer for my group and it was a very intense session for everyone at the table.
But there was lots of laughing and cheering and clapping of hands of approval.
I'm saying that different games have different rules and procedures that produce wildly different results from similar sorts of play. When my gang heads out after a Sorcerer session, all we're doing is talking about how we want to get back together again and play more. I certainly sounds that, on the social level of just between folks, we're getting a different result than what you got at your session. (And, I offer again, the games go on for several months. And I could continue them, but the imagination of the Players keep coming up with new settings for Sorcerer.)
To answer some of your questions: "So the characters have a common history. They've already been designed to have something in common. They work together, take missions together, etc. But what will the captain do when he finds out the others have disobeyed a direct order? Will he kick them off his ship? Can he afford to do so? How much freedom does he really have? Are there really no expectations as to how he should act?"
- I have no idea what the Captain will do. But he could choose to take any action he wanted.
- He might kick them off the ship. He might not. By the time the bomb is revealed, the Captain might be the one eager to use it and the two other PCs might have changed their minds, wishing they'd never brought the thing on board.
- He can afford to do so... but if does this (and he might not! -- it might never come to anything like this!) the crew might mutiny. We won't know till a choice is actually made.
- He has all the freedom he wants.
- There are expectations built on the details of his character sheet only to the degree that his choices will most likely "orbit" the details on the sheet -- but they do not dictate choices. At all. For example is a reluctant noble with complicated relationships with his father (the Duke of a subsector) mother, uncle and aunt. This will inform his choices. But dictates nothing. There are many details on the PC's sheet like this.
Here's detail from the sheet:
Sorcerer also has a Humanity rating on a scale of 0 to 10. The rating itself does nothing to "control" or dictate behavior, but if a PC's Humanity reaches 0, the Player loses the PC (he is not longer human!) In each game of Sorcerer the group customizes the definition of Humanity. For our Traveller setting game, the definition is Friendship. So the choices, the big choices, orbit the choices of Friendship against Alienation. You make rolls when your PC commits acts that either support or deny friendship, and your Humanity might go up or down because of that.
Now, clearly, if a PC keeps acting against his friends it will drive his Humanity to 0 and he's out of the game! But it's important to realize that a Player can do exactly that. That's a choice for the Player alone. In my first game of Sorcerer I drove my PC's Humanity to 0 and it was a blast. He was a bitter, angry man driven by horrible passions and did the wrong thing time and again... and then (using rules from the game) we re-wrote him and I got him back as a PC and he travelled a path of redemption. It was awesome.
So, there are imaginative "constraints" on the PCs (the fiction, the rules that tie to the fiction) but there are no expectations. At all.
And I need to repeat one final time: it works great. There's no anger at the table. Everyone has a great time. The sessions are compelling. The games don't dry up or blow up. Everyone can't wait to continue the stories to the next session.
Callan S.:
Hi Martijn,
You may very well have been doing nar sessions already. Nar isn't supposed to be complicated.
If I read a text on the chemistry of breathing, yet it never mentioned the word 'breathe', I probably wouldn't associate all that chemistry talk with something I do naturally, all the time. You might be the same with the nar essays and such. It might be so over explained you can't connect it with something you already do. But if you want to get into the 'chemistry' of nar latter on, there's some texts for it.
Dr_Pete:
I think there are some structures built into traditional rpgs which may seem obvious or necessary but which may not be, and that's at least part of the communication issue, because these other, less traditional ideas can pop the top on them. I'm going to try to avoid jargon, to make my point.
In D&D, there's a basic structure to a game, which has been there from the beginning. The players have characters. Those characters are on a team. Their goal (broadly) is to go up against bad guys, kill them, and get stuff. The DM creates bad guys, and rewards the players for beating them. Success is measured in survival and growth of power. This is basically the template for most RPGs that follow.
None of it is required, but if you get rid of much of it, you end up playing a potentially very different game. Even moving to Call of Cthulhu is very hard for a lot of people because playing the game probably means "failure" in the survival and growth of power realms. Taking away accumulation of stuff can even be difficult for a lot of players. Now, gathering stuff, going up levels, etc... that has little or nothing to do with "story", but it's pretty hardwired into a lot of roleplaying experience. Losing all your stuff, being thrown in prison, having your trigger finger cut off so your sharpshooter can't shoot your gun any more... those are legit story elements which might destroy many players' enjoyment of a game too much to continue.
I bring that up because there's a huge difference between what's held up here as the goal of roleplaying here and what a lot of people "want" out of roleplaying. That said, many don't know what the choices might be.
I do think it's important for something needs to bring the people at the table together, at some level, so they're clearly doing something connected. In boardgames, for example, it's more interesting if your "move" can effect what happens to someone else's game than if you are all effectively playing Solitaire at the same table. If you have 4 characters who are on completely unrelated adventures, that's kibbitzing at 3 solo rpgs, and having a DM who is only occasionally paying attention to you. If you play a game centered around flying from place to place on a spaceship having adventures, and you "let" each player go to a different planet, and deal with unrelated stories, that's more or less what you're doing. A "game" about Inara being a Companion in the Core, Mal making a deal on a space station, and Jayne on a bar crawl on a backwater planet would be hard to tie together. Add Zoe hunting for Wash (who didn't show up for the session) on a pleasure planet, and you've got a total lack of focus, probably.
On the other hand, that *might* make a decent game, if there was a common thread to it all of some kind. The players would slowly see the big picture, and because the characters were all nibbling around a common issue, it theoretically could start to grow into one big story with four or five "subplots", each of which was, itself, an interesting story. Maybe Inara is enticed to travel to the backwater planet by the executive in charge of making an army of super-Wash-soldiers, and Mal is hired to smuggle dinosaurs there or something. Not that this is true to the characters of the Firefly story. The point is that you do need something tying the stories together, but it doesn't need to be "team play".
Alright, enough rambling for one post... the point is that there's a lot of hidden structure to most roleplaying group play. I am excited to see that a lot of it is optional. The assumption that you can just add a rule or two to "drift" a game without examining that structure, I think, is false.
Dr Pete
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